In sickness and in health

The past week or so seems to have been one continuous round of accident and illness. I have spent part of almost every day at the Accrington Pals Memorial Health Centre: nice new posh building, at least I'm becoming familiar with it!

It began on Wednesday, 23rd when Geoff complained that his knee was painful. As he sat watching TV, not particularly doing anything with his knee it gradually became more and more painful to the extent that when he tried to stand up to go into the dining room he was hobbling and limping. By the end of the evening he could put no weight on the leg at all and his knee looked rather red and swollen. He tried some massage cream, a heat lamp and a bandage before going to bed but nothing proved effective and by the time for bed he couldn't even lift his leg off the ground. Needless to say he couldn't go to work the following day. He couldn't even drive the car to get there let alone drive a coach once he had.

So we made the first trip to APMHC on the Thursday morning by taxi with his sliding himself horizontally onto the back seat because he couldn't even bend the leg. The doctor prescribed two lots of enormous tablets (poor Geoff hates taking tablets) and said if the swelling hadn't started to go down by the next day he would have to go back to have fluid drained off! It seemed to concern him that some infection could spread into the knee joint. Fortunately the swelling did start to go down and by Monday he was able to go back to work.

The second trip to the Health Centre was with Em and her back and shoulder on the Friday. She ended up with liquid medication because she can't take tablets at all.

On the Monday morning it was Myrra's turn. Her lower back had been plaguing her for a while but it began to trouble her more so before going to college she made a trip to the doctor and as she had never been to the new Health Centre before I accompanied her. She was given a course of tablets and off she toddled to college.

On Tuesday she developed a sore throat which had become so bad by the evening that she was unable to speak and didn't go to Youth which she'd been looking forward to as it was a 'New Beginnings' evening to welcome the new ones coming up from Primary to Young Women and as the Laurel's representative Myrra had written a little talk and made some hand outs. She scribbled the talk out on paper for someone else to read and Em took the hand outs to hand out.

By Wednesday morning Myrra's throat was so bad and her glands seemed swollen, no over the counter medication was helping so it was yet another trip to the Health Centre and a course of penicillin. The doctor isn't sure if it's tonsillitis or glandular fever. We're hoping the penicillin will fettle it.

So far I'm the only one who hasn't been struck down with something. It's like the seven plagues of Egypt around here!


Sunday at Church

The Relief Society lesson went really well.

I'd prepared a visual aid to illustrate the 'Good, Better, Best' idea with a jar half full of wheat (the good stuff) some ping pong balls to represent the better stuff and a plastic tennis ball to represent the best. The idea has been used in the past to illustrate that if you put all the small stuff in first as priority one it's hard to fit in the larger more important things represented by the ping pong balls. It can be done but it's a struggle.

I'd asked for volunteers - Janelle came out first and tried desperately to squeeze in the ping pong balls amongst the rice and just about succeeded. June was my second volunteer and I gave her the tennis ball and asked her to put that in as well. The ping pong balls were right at the top and almost out of the jar. She looked at me and "You're joking!" She did have a brave attempt but it just wasn't going to go in. The sisters were giggling and finding it all very amusing which I hope will mean that they'll remember the lesson because I told them that the tennis ball was the most important thing and that it mattered that we choose that first - the best.

I then tipped the wheat and ping pong balls out of the jar and put the tennis ball in - best stuff first. Then I dropped in the ping pong balls (the better than good things) around it. Angela then volunteered to pour in the wheat. Now she already has a reputation for spilling wheat when we made some hot wheater bottles years ago so she was determined not to spill any this time and spent most of the rest of the lesson trying to make sure every little grain went in that jar.

I was hoping that she would actually spill some and then I could tell them that it didn't matter if some of the good things got missed. It mattered more that we didn't miss better or best things by concentrating on the good. However, it didn't look like I was going to get chance to point that out as she was so determined to make up for past wheat loss and told the tale of her ill-fated hot wheater bottle which again brought waves of giggles. (We'd all sewn our bottle shapes out of pretty patterned material and my late husband was going round everyone with the correct measure of wheat for each 'bottle' and carefully pouring it in. When he got to Angela's a great deal of wheat ended up on the table and she was telling him to be more careful as he was missing the bag. He insisted he wasn't missing the bag as he was pouring it directly into the hole. Then she held the bag up and wheat came pouring out of the bottom - she hadn't sewn it up properly! We've laughed at the memory of that for years.) So this time Angela was determined that no wheat would be spilled.

As it happened, by doing so she proved an added insight into the subject because she was concentrating so much on getting every last grain of wheat into the jar that she hadn't a clue what happened in the rest of the lesson, which rather illustrated Elder Oaks' point that by making too much of a fuss over the good things we may end up overlooking the better things and miss out on the best things.

One of those days - or Wind in the Willows

My youngest daughter had a day off school today due to Teacher Training so we decided to have a Mummy/Daughter day. Unfortunately none of it went quite to plan.

We set off out quite early which was probably our biggest mistake but she wanted to see a doctor about the pain she's had in her back for the past few days and if you don't get down there by 8:30am you've lost all chance of seeing anyone.

We were first there and straight in and out - is nobody else ill at the moment? That meant that by 9am we were in town and raring to go - but where? Accrington was still asleep.

She fancied a look round Blackburn market and we thought perhaps we'd visit the cinema there so off we went.

It doesn't take very long to get to Blackburn so it was still mid morning by the time we'd looked around a few shops, she bought a scarf, and headed off towards the cinema to see what films were on and what time they were showing.

As we crossed the Boulevard it began to feel a little breezy. I looked over towards the cathedral and the sky was steel grey - looks like rain, I thought as we headed through the station and under the tracks to get to the cinema side.

As we emerged at the car park side where the cinema is the wind was howling and nearly blew us back down the steps again. We battled against it to reach the cinema/bowling alley entrance. Em said we could have done with a pair of those sticks skiers use to dig into the ground to stop us being blown backwards. I have never experienced such a strong wind. It was very difficult to remain upright.

Finally we reached the cinema, only to discover that the doors were locked and we couldn't get in to get any information about the films anyway, so back through the station we headed. "Let's avoid the steps" Em said, "In case get get blown down them!" Very wise, as we headed for the ramp we were blown down there so fiercely that we actually ended up running without intending to.

Thought we'd try the info machine outside the station, but it wasn't working so we had a go at the other one at the opposite end of the Boulevard bus station but that wasn't working either! Next idea was to head for the information centre to see if they could tell us what would be on at the cinema and when. The wind blew us in the right direction.

Alas, although they could give us the information it wasn't as promising as we had hoped. The only thing which was on in the afternoon, which wasn't rated 15 or above and therefore unsuitable for Em, was something she didn't fancy at all about battling aliens.

We did our own bit of battling through the wind again and got the bus back!


Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there has been a bit of DIY taking place. Geoff decided to find out what was wrong with one of the wall lights in the front room - result we need new wall lights. We had a look in Homebase and I spotted some I liked the look of. In fact I think I like them better than the ones we had before. They just need fixing up now.

I had another chance to look over the talk which is the subject matter for my Sunday Lesson, and tried to sort out some books upstairs. We seem to be overrun with books and the plan is to sort out the ones none of us need now and to take them to a charity shop. I'd got a large box to put them all in, but we ended up with just 3 so I transferred them to a small bag.

So, we never did get to the cinema but we might have another go tomorrow.

Another day - another duster

Out of the three tasks I set myself yesterday I didn't really acheive any!

I did do some of the washing and that is now dry but there is still a mountain of it upstairs.

I had a look at my lesson, remembered we'd had a talk in Sacrament meeting on the same topic from someone far better than I at putting these things across and wondered how on earth I am going to tackle the same subject and make it interesting again to people who only heard it two weeks previously by someone intelligent and interesting. The topic is a talk by Dallin H. Oaks entitled "Good, Better, Best". It's in the November 2007 Ensign so not only will they have heard Tim's talk on the talk, they may well have read the talk in the Ensign and even heard the talk itself in October Conference. For some people my lesson may be the fourth time they have experienced this. Oh boy, that fills me full of confidence!

What else didn't I do? I didn't make any progress with this flippin website thing. It's supposed to start off with an image of a barn and then the doors open to reveal all the website content. A bird should be flying nonchalantly across the sky. So far I've got a barn with the doors firmly shut and a bird which is dementedly flapping away as if it's life depended on it and getting precisely nowhere!

I did get the front room cleaned and shelves by my computer desk sorted out though so it's not as if I didn't achieve something.

So, what are the challenges for today? Well I go for my next lesson tonight so maybe I'll learn how to do something really basic and useful.

I need to pray for inspiration about the Relief Society lesson. Hopefully I can get a bit of a discussion going on the topic. It's actually one which is quite pertinent to me about not overloading yourself with good things to the detriment of the better things and not having time for the best things. When I first joined the Church I tried to do everything and just wore myself out. Now I'm a lot more selective and realise that it's impossible to do everything all the time without cracking up. I used to spend a lot of my time on genealogy but that was when I had easy access to facilities and a whole day a week when I had nothing else to do. Now I have other priorities and refuse to allow anyone to try to make me feel guilty for not spending as much time in the past.

Late Starter

Well, here we are more than halfway through January and I've only just started to write something.

As if that isn't bad enough - how long has it actually taken me to get around to creating a blog? How long have I had a computer? How long have I had internet access? How long have blog sites existed? How long is a piece of string?

Anyway I've finally got around to it. A while ago I managed to set up a blog for a pink furry rabbit so I figure it's about time I did one for myself. I find it easier to send emails and post messages on online forums than I do to pick up pen and paper and actually send letters to people so perhaps I'll find it easier to add to a blog than I do to write in a journal. I don't seem to remember having done that since last summer!

I did have a blog on the AccyWeb but when that went awol for a while I lost interest and haven't added to it since it came back. Hopefully I'll be adding a little more to this one each day.

Things to do today:-

1. I MUST have a look at the lesson I'm teaching in Relief Society on Sunday. I can't even remember what it's about! Now that IS bad. I should have it all prepared and ready by now. I am getting more and more disorganised.

2. I need to have a look at the Flash8 tutorials and have another play with the website I'm supposed to be creating before I go for my next lesson tomorrow. I seem to have forgotten more than I've learned.

3. Washing - there always seems to be washing to do!